Monday, December 15, 2008

Papyrology at the APA (Philadelphia)

This seminar will workshop lyric fragments from the Michigan collection as a precursor to publication. The verses discuss the construction of the Trojan Horse, but the identities of both the narrator and a quoted speaker are uncertain, as is the mythographic context. Their editor tentatively attributes the style and language to Euripides, but the verses are not manifestly dramatic and cannot be ascribed to a known play. The fragments raise many problems—papyrological, mythographical, metrical, narratological, and literary—and following the panelists’ presentations, the seminar will collaborate to shed further light on them.

Culture and Society in Greek, Roman, and Early Byzantine Egypt Sponsored by the American Society of Papyrologists Raffaella Cribiore, Organizer

This panel testifies to the richness of the discipline of papyrology and shows a variety of approaches that illuminate important areas of study. Several papers concern the legal system in Greek, Roman, and early Byzantine Egypt. They analyze the Ptolemaic law enforcement system; the access that non-elites had to legal rights; the litigiousness of individuals in light of the modern legal system; and the coexistence of legal traditions and change. Other papers concern the process of dictating letters, which is enlightened by comparative evidence, and the application of bibliological and palaeographical criteria to contextualize literary papyri from the Fayyum.

1. John Bauschatz, The University of Arizona Ptolemaic phylakitai: Variety and Versatility (15 mins.)

2. Ari Bryen, The University of Chicago The Rhetoric of Rights in Roman Egypt (15 mins.)

3. Maryline Parca, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Legal Continuity, Legal Change, and Resistance to Change in the Papyri (15 mins.)

4. Ben Kelly, York University Aurelius Isidorus as “Repeat Player”: The Sociology of Litigiousness in Early-Byzantine Egypt (15 mins.)